`Bewitched' Influenced Tv Women

May 21, 1995|By FREDERIC M. BIDDLE The Boston Globe

It befits the mystery of her most celebrated character, a witch, that obituaries of Elizabeth Montgomery, who died of cancer on Thursday, cannot agree on whether she was 57 or 62. What's no secret, as confirmed by the popularity of Bewitched on the Nickelodeon cable network, is that Montgomery, with a twitch of her nose, created the central character of a sitcom whose influence on how women have been portrayed by television has not been fully appreciated. Nearly a decade before Mary Richards broke into the workplace in her overt, feminist way on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Montgomery's Samantha Stephens strained at the leash. A sensual blond housewife married to type-A ad executive Darrin Stephens of Westport, Conn., Samantha embodied the social conventions of the 1964-65 debut season of Bewitched, yet with an ominous twist.

Samantha was possessed of supernatural powers Darrin constantly tried to suppress. Her ability to bend time, space and situation threatened more than just the order of the Stephens household. Even as he lectured her, Darrin often referred to his wife by the masculine nickname "Sam," and Samantha routinely consorted as an equal with history's famous men. Julius Caesar came to her home when she asked Esmerelda, another witch, to make a Caesar salad.

That Montgomery underplayed the role of Samantha made her credible: She could not easily be dismissed with any stereotypes commonly applied to powerful women. The subtle message, and the ham-fisted humor, combined to make a hit with audiences: Bewitched ended its first season at No. 2 in the ratings, making it the biggest success to date for ABC.

As Bewitched passed through eight seasons and several Emmy Awards, the implications of Samantha's status became ever clearer, sometimes unintentionally. When Dick York, the original Darrin, was replaced by Dick Sargent in 1969, the man of the house was reduced to an interchangeable nonentity. Samantha's powers were passed down to her daughter, Tabitha, showing whose genes dominated whose.

By 1972, the special-effects concepts of Bewitched had become hopelessly dated. That freed Montgomery to pursue a more conventional career as an actress.

Eschewing a second TV series, Montgomery instead made TV movies such as A Case of Rape (1974) and The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975). By then, she had reportedly become the first actress to command $1 million for a TV movie. None of Montgomery's subsequent roles matched those in quality, although even her last role - that of Miami's Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter Edna Buchanan in a CBS movie that aired earlier this month - was perhaps as faithful as any to the independent and powerful path that Samantha Stephens had conjured.